Split Chief Minister

The ancient Egyptians loathed the changes that life brings. They sought an untroubled permanence in death. Pharaohs who could afford it built pyramids to shelter them in eternity. Others enshrined themselves differently in stone. One such was Sema-tawy-tefnakht, a blood relative of Pharaoh Psamtik I, who commissioned a stylized likeness of himself in rare and unfrugal alabaster, ordered it set in the temple of Amun at Karnak. Permanence, at least in alabaster, is not man's lot; as time passed, his statue was broken in half and thrown into a pit near the temple. In 1951 the top half was bought by Richmond's Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. This month the bust was rejoined with the missing lower half to make the proud minister once more a whole man (see opposite page).

Humpty Dumpty Hunt. This miraculous reunion in Richmond owes nothing to the ancient gods of Egypt, everything to Egyptologist Bernard Bothmer of the Brooklyn Museum, a man who plays the mating game with a passion. When he first saw the broken bust in 1951, it left an indelible impression. "It was as if he were alive," recalls Bothmer. "He is tense and poised. I knew that the bottom part would be cross-legged in the stylized posture of a scribe." Then, while combing through the archives at Paris' College de France, Bothmer came upon a yellowed 1934 photograph of a seated figure, missing from the waist up. He began a 13-year hunt to find the bottom part in order to put this Egyptian Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Sleuthing led Bothmer in 1956 to an Egyptian merchant's house in Luxor. The Virginia bust had borne the inscription of Psamtik I; the base in Luxor babbled in hieroglyphs that it was a seat for "the Count of Counts, Prince of Princes, Chief of Chiefs, Foremost Nobleman of the Companions, Eyes of the King in Upper Egypt, the King's Mouthpiece in Lower Egypt." The carving clearly identified Sema-tawy-tefnakht, known historically as Psamtik's chief minister. When the part purchased in Egypt was lifted into place in the U.S., Bothmer had his moment of triumph. "Click, it fitted right in," he beams. "The break fitted beautifully."

Alabaster Soul. Now united again after 2,600 years and surrounded by statuary from his period, Psamtik's minister has regained his look of permanence. A closed form in lustrous alabaster, his presence is pounded out of stone with a mallet as if hacked from timelessness by human persistence. The pose may be stiff, but the archaic smile on the ancient Egyptian's lips reflects an implicit belief that he has found a house for his soul and that his eyes gaze toward eternity. Yet without patient scholarship, he would only have added to the historic rubble of mankind.

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